7 Simple Tweaks of Linking Urgency With Your Offers

One of the hardest tasks Philippine entrepreneurs face every single day is how to make people act favorably and with dispatch on their offers.

Filipinos will never really act immediately on offers made to them online. They never will unless you ask them to by strategically inserting what are known as ‘calls to action’. On the other hand, if you pepper your site with too many of these calls to action, you may end up looking like hard selling to people. This will turn them off never to visit your site ever again.

The Science of Urgency

Creating a sense of urgencyis the heart and soul of any selling process whether it is online or offline. It is about getting the sale now, which is the object of every sales pitch made. It is rather delicate when applied to online marketing because done wrong it may hurt the fragile sensibilities of online shoppers. It needs to be exacting like an art striking a careful balance between reason and emotion without going overboard and giving consumers just enough push to move them into action.

Generally, Filipinos buy on impulse or out of emotions. However, online shoppers balance it with reason them having sufficient time in their hands to weigh the pros and cons of the purchase. The urgency or the call to action is what gives them the compelling reason to buy now. It is a skill that can be learned and which every internet marketer has to learn.

7 Urgency Tweaks for Your Irresistible Offers

Below are 7 ways of adding urgency to every offer you make online.

Sell a Product/Service that has an Overwhelmingly Compelling Value – Nothing beats having an outstanding product to sell that offers superior benefits to consumers or provide the perfect solution to their problems. Marketing a product like this with passion creates urgency by default and it starts with the search for the perfect product to market.

Herald Scarcity – A product with a compelling value that is being sold in limited quantities or for a limited time only will definitely urge people to make a beeline for the checkout counters. Some examples of these are as follows:

“Limited only to the next 100 buyers”

“Offer good while supply lasts”

“Last three pairs”.

Flash Sale – Filipinos know sales are conducted on practically any occasion. They are likely to wait things out until seasonal sales come around. However, you may want to up your sales volume in between and you can do this by conducting flash sales. One way of doing this is by offering a huge discount on a fixed quantity of an item on a particular day. An example of this would be something like this:

“25 pairs of Levi Jeans at 50% discount on Monday only”

Deal websites such as Ensogo often uses urgency techniques.

Free Shipping Offers with Order by Date – Shipping charges is a cost online shoppers disdain. You can create some urgency by offering free shipping as long as they place their orders on or before a specific date. An example of this is as follows:

“Free shipping for orders placed before February 14, 2012”

Use benefit-based calls to action wherever applicable. This type of calls to action focus on the specific benefits (not the features) that customers stand to gain from the offer. They can take several forms. Below are some examples of benefit-based calls to action.

“Sign up now and start earning a fortune” – <ACT> and <BENEFIT>

“Learn to speak English in 15 days” – Learn how to <BENEFIT>

Institute some form of a Rewards Program – This is a call to action that will reward customers for patronizing your products continuously. Airlines companies and fastfood chains use this type of call to action often. An example of this would be something like this:

“ Free Fries on your next purchase”

The Buy and Get Offer – This is almost identical to the <ACTION> for <BENEFIT> discussed above and offers customers another amount of the product purchased free or at a discounted price in exchange for the purchase of a given amount of the same merchandise. A classic example of this is the buy 1 get 1 free or BOGO for short that you will see offered in most stores. There are a number of configurations you can do with this model like:

“Buy 3, Get 1 at half-price”

“Buy 2, Get 1 FREE”

Disheartened?

If you are struggling to get people to act on your online offers then perhaps it is time you consider reviewing your ad copy. Your calls to action may not be generating any sense of urgency and may need revising. Don’t lose heart because consumers buy products for a myriad of reasons. There are those who buy only who buy only when there is a sale. There are those who hurriedly purchase because it is the last set available or it offers a deal they simply can’t let pass.

An Innovative Urgency Idea

The idea is putting together the right context and message, which will generate enough sense of urgency to make a prospective customer buy your products. A call to action that has just the right mix will immediately connect emotionally with consumers as long as it clearly conveys the potential benefits of responding to the contextual message. As shown above, you can embed the message with a high degree of urgency in three ways – by limiting the time the offer is good; limiting the quantity of the product being offered; or, limit what is being offered.

Or, you can construct a message with utmost urgency simply by using some urgent language like:

Call us for this special offer;

75% off this week only;

Only for serious buyers;

While supply lasts.

Creating that sense of urgency can be as simple as using the right urgency words in your copy. However, you should not make the mistake of overloading your messages with these words as it will turn off consumers and make your message appear like a hard sell. Use exclamation point sparingly too. One to two exclamation points will do. Too many exclamation points will dilute the effectiveness of your message.

Always remember, the secret to making an URGENT call to action is not to suggest the action but to demand it.

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Paul Agabin Paul Agabin is the Founder and CEO of Wooka Interactive. He is an internet marketer based in the Philippines which deals with varied topics such as local industry news, seo strategies, content marketing, inbound marketing, social media management, website reviews, and the like. You can contact him at 0917-5069839.